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Cape Town – Oprah Winfrey denies that she has a son, saying the “secret son” who ambushed her, is someone she tried to help decades ago and who she had broken all ties with.
Calvin Mitchell ambushed the TV titan in New York outside the Ed Sullivan theatre after she did a late night talk show appearance – pleading with Oprah to take back her “secret son”.
Calvin was one of the fans meeting Oprah who did a quick signing and meet-and-greet outside with fans, but Calvin’s appearance was actually a set-up by the National Enquirer who arranged for him to be there to confront Oprah.
“He never was my son. He was a child I befriended. I moved his entire family out of the projects. Got his mother a job. I tried. Put him in two different schools. He refused. And I said I’m now done,” Oprah told Entertainment Tonight on Thursday night.
“I did have a son at 14,” said Oprah.
“That son was a baby who died. And I would have to say, if I was a birth son, I would look for me too,” Oprah told the entertainment news magazine show.
She explained that she met Calvin in 1992 on a movie set. “We were shooting in the projects in Chicago and I was sitting on-set during a break and this cute sparkly-eyed boy came to hand me a soda.”
“I was so charmed by him that I started talking to him about his family, his school life and found out that he was in a situation where his mother didn’t have a job and they were stuck in the projects.”
She moved the whole family to another house, paid to put Calvin in a private school, and after problems moved him to another private Christian school.
“I found another school in Mississippi that was a private boarding school because I thought if I could remove him from the environment that he’d be accustomed to growing up in, that maybe would be helpful to him.”
At 16 Calvin said he doesn’t want to stay in the school because the teachers didn’t like him.
“I said Calvin, this is the moment. I know you are 16 and can’t see the road ahead but if you leave this school and refuse to get an education – I have tried to offer you an education twice – there isn’t another school I can put you in. If you leave this school, I am done. There is nothing else I can do. And that was my last conversation with Calvin in the early 90s,” Oprah told Entertainment Tonight.
Awkward encounter:
After she was ambushed for a tabloid story while cameras clicked away to capture the very awkward interaction, Oprah said she could still see “the little boy” in Calvin’s eyes. I said to him: ‘What are you doing? Why did you go to the tabloids?’
“As I left, and he was looking so forlorn, he was like, 'Can I speak to you?' So I said to somebody on my team, 'Will somebody get Calvin's number so I can contact him later?' I didn't realise the whole thing was a setup. When I realized the whole thing was a setup, I was no longer interested in speaking to him.”
‘To my son Calvin, I love you’
Calvin told Radar Online that Oprah allegedly asked his mother to adopt him when he was 11. Oprah allegedly sent Calvin and his family gifts with notes like: “To my son Calvin, I love you”.
“I was young. I made a dumb decision and Oprah wouldn’t forgive me.I feel like what she did was wrong,” Calvin told Radar, saying he became suicidal because Oprah Winfrey “abandoned” him.
“She told me: ‘Calvin, just try to work it out. You can do it. Just hang in there.’ She was trying to inspire me to do what was right. But even after the long talk she gave me, I still left. I just wanted to come home, and Oprah didn’t understand that.”
Oprah has since given scholarships to hundreds of men to study at Morehouse College in Atlantha and continues to run her school for girls, The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa which she pays for.
Oprah is also paying for the tertiary education of all the South African girls who want to study further. Mariculants from her school from multiple years are currently studying in South Africa as well as at tertiary institutions across America since Oprah allows them to choose where those who want to further their studies, want to go.
Watch it here:
